I Had the Time of My Life, and I Owe it All to... Patrick Swayze?

This is actually a "Reader Recommendation" movie from twitter user and host of the awesome Weekly Geekly podcast @wideawakewesley. You'll find a few comments from him around on the site too. He gave me a whole slew of recommendations and this one stuck out to me because I know it's a classic and I'm a sucker for dancing!

Dirty Dancing (1987) takes place in the summer of 1963 where a small family spends their holiday at a resort and a young girl falls in love with the dance instructor there. Staring Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze, it's all about young love, dance, the heat of the night, and doing the right thing. My thoughts swirl onto the page right after the jump.


I have to say, for a movie from 1987 about the early 1960's it still totally holds up today. It helps that the music time travels from the 80's back into the movie, where we see some time bending in which characters in the movie know the words to songs that didn't exist in 1963. Namely, we see Patrick Swayze sing along to the movie's main song "(I've Had) The Time of My Life" which wasn't made until 1981 originally. It's all good though, because it keeps the tempo up beat, at least for me. I'm not sure how well it would play for people who don't have that nostalgia from growing up in the 80's though. But then again I still enjoyed the 60's music that appeared in the film, so I think it would still play well to all audiences.

Now of course I have to talk about the dancing, the word is even in the title! The dancing is great! The dance numbers are well choreographed, and often hot! Seeing Jennifer Grey practicing in various states of very little clothing is fantastic! But there's plenty there for the female audience too with all the shirtless ripped men.

Practice makes perfect! Also, please note the thin white wet shirt ;)

Jennifer Grey does a great job of acting awkward and clumsy and showing slow but steady progression to become an amazing dancer by the end. She is of course aided by the amazing Patrick Swayze. He really surprised me in this. Finally a leading man that actually looks and acts like one! I'm so sick of all the movies coming out these days with their sappy leading men. But that's besides the point. The acting is very good in Dirty Dancing and not only was I able to believe their dancing, but also what they were feeling. This is a romance after all, and if you can't buy into that, the whole thing is going to fall apart. Luckily that's not the case and I completely believed the budding romance on screen.

So there you have it, good dancing, good acting, good music. Not much else I could have asked from this movie. As a side note, am I the only one who thinks Jennifer Grey looks like Hayden Panettiere from the doomed Heroes tv show? If they remake this movie anytime soon, she'd be a spitting image. Too bad they'd probably ruin it with some twilight sap as the male lead. But I don't even want to think about that. See this movie. I can totally recommend it! Thanks Wes!